even in this storm, the river flows into the sea

--Mirela Brailean (Iasi, Romania)

* * *

Skeleton dome
in the burning sun
A-bomb day
--Satoru Kanematsu (Nagoya)

* * *

ocean foam--
the memories that refuse
to leave
--Mona Bedi (Delhi, India)

* * *

war news
on a child’s ribs
we read it
--Justice Joseph Prah (Accra, Ghana)

* * *

garden rows
a strawberry seed
under the gum line
--Anne Morrigan (Kitchener, Ontario)

* * *

back from the war
roadside rose petals
shower upon him
--Eugeniusz Zacharski (Darlowo, Poland)

* * *

city rioters
a wayside dandelion
bends its head
--Arvinder Kaur (Chandigarh, India)

* * *

hearing cries for help--
O violinist renew my faith
no other theme but joy
--Luciana Moretto (Treviso, Italy)

* * *

there’s no going back
once you open to the world
peony blossom
--Noga Shemer (Storrs, Connecticut)

* * *

heavenly river…
the psychic’s nebulous words
about my future
--Jackie Chou (Pico Rivera, California)

------------------------------
FROM THE NOTEBOOK
------------------------------

stormy sea
lying for a moment
beside a dead jellyfish
--Marcellin Dallaire-Beaumont (Brussels, Belgium)

The haikuist took refuge on a beach. Gasping for breath in Neuenkirchen, Germany, Alexander Groth was pounded by the weight of rising ocean temperatures.

El Nino--
in my chest the sound
of heavy rain

When a heavy moon rose on Aug. 1 over Whitehorse, Yukon, Sandra St-Laurent sprawled out in a sleeping position that resembled a star-shaped echinoderm.

El Nino moon
stranded on our beds
dreams of starfishes

Giuliana Ravaglia sketched parallel transverse lines in Bologna, Italy. Writing from Kunming, China, Chen Xiaoou, the haikuist momentarily lost sight of a ship.

rough sea--
the flight of the dragonfly
rising above the waves

* * *

rough sea
the vanished steamer
appears again

Padraig O’Morain reflected on the accuracy of circadian rhythms in Dublin, Ireland.

a cuckoo starts up
that’s all very well
but you’re late today

Reflecting on Buddhist contradictions and the cycle of death and rebirth in Thames Ditton, U.K., Keith Evetts recalled asking a former ambassador to Tokyo about the burdens of representational entertainment, to which he replied: “There are times when a boiled egg in bed is absolute Heaven.”

sunny morning
on the way to nirvana
a soft-boiled egg

Liz Gibbs had hoped for at least a tidbit of talk in Calgary, Alberta. Maya Daneva briskly moved onto a new topic of discussion in The Netherlands.

Isolation
craving the morsels
of small conversation

* * *

seaside wind
jellyfish take over
our conversation

Laurence Raphael Brothers reported that he “visited the charming and friendly but sadly diminished town of Soma in Fukushima and wandered into a tiny izakaya bar, where the barman regaled us with the story of his exploits in the annual capture-the-flag competition that commemorates the medieval rivalry between nearby towns.”

cavalry tactics
yield to izakaya cheer--
fried food and sake

The haikuist ai li misses the arcades and food stands that lined a platform on pillars which stretched gaily from the shore into the sea.

seaside town
its pier
now deceased

Kanematsu heard the sea.

Shell windbell
sound of the ocean
far away

Tomislav Maretic walked to the cliff’s edge in Zagreb, Croatia. Helga Stania found paradise stretched along a valley in the Swiss Alps.

end of the path--
the crickets’ song rising towards
the Milky Way

* * *

narrow alleys
’tween roof edges the stars
above the Engadine

Susan Rogers enjoyed a good show overhead Big Bear Lake, California. She remarked how the skies were so clear that “the heavens were indeed a river of jewels. My friend turned to me and said, ‘the stars outshine the fireworks’.”

summer fireworks
high above thundering waves
an explosion of stars

Kanematsu awaits the war’s end.

Sunflowers--
may peace be restored
to Ukraine

Richard Bailly continues to wait in Fargo, North Dakota. Natalia Kuznetsova waits in Moscow, Russia.

stormy weather
no end in sight
world on shoulders

* * *

rough seas--
waiting for her lover
a girl at the quay

When he first saw a ship on the horizon off Hawaii, Eric Kimura said he “struggled a bit to capture it… then a week later” he saw a similar scene and realized that he “was missing the sense of touching the infinite. The haiku then wrote itself.”

Balancing serene
Yet on infinity’s edge
Ship sails horizon

Dreaming in Sofia, Bulgaria, Minko Tanev touched the Black Sea.

sparkling sea--
sun behind the window
in the outline of infinity

Ed Bremson recalled a very enjoyable trip he took to the beach near Raleigh, North Carolina, a very long time ago--70 years to be exact, he said.

gazing over the sea,
eating Frosted Flakes
from the box

Julia Guzman kept a winter-themed travel journal while driving for days to Comodoro Rivadavia in Patagonia, Argentina.

sheep by the wire fence
morning Patagonian storm
midway on the trip

* * *

different cloud shapes--
at the end of the long road
herd of guanacos

Keith Evetts sailed in a southerly direction.

night passage
the Southern Cross
bobbing up and down

From his seaside perch in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture, Yutaka Kitajima can almost see the shoreline on an island in the Sea of Japan. Bedi recalled the taste of the Indian Ocean.

A long swim
to Sado... Noah
of few words

* * *

morning sea
we taste the salt
on our cookies

St-Laurent christened her busy roadside shop.

fresh coat of paint
on the lemonade stand
“El Nino”

Murasaki Sagano tapped her index finger approvingly at a fruit stand in Tokyo. Kanematsu chatted at the garden gate.

Sweet sounds
of the farmer’s fillips
fresh watermelons

* * *

Big pumpkin
shared with a neighbor
half and half

Slobodan Pupovac can no longer pull in anything from Zagreb, Croatia. Marek Printer can no longer hear sounds from an old pond in Kielce, Poland.

El Nino...
the fish swim deeper
and deeper

* * *

looming El Nino
the frog burrows in mud
deeper and deeper

Teiichi Suzuki in Osaka and Richard L. Matta in San Diego, California, seem to have grown tired of North Korea’s constant barrage of military projectiles. Stephen J. DeGuire may have knocked back a few shots to cool down. He suppressed his true feelings about the heat by using an expression from the military phonetic alphabet in Los Angeles, California.

The rough sea
missiles flying over
Sado island

* * *

ballistic rockets...
and in the deep sky
a silent Milky Way

* * *

three whiskies…
a tango becomes
a foxtrot

Sherry Reniker succumbed to the heat in Kent, Washington.

in the Pacific again
a “little boy”
threatens

Refika Dedic stayed put in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

tired of running away
I found refuge
in a lonely house

Wearing a light dress and sipping cold water, Angela Giordano nonetheless felt her body burn in Avigliano, Italy: from the window the African heat takes my breath away

Kyle Sullivan studied haiku in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

crack in the chrysalis…
letting bits of this
body go

After scarabs metamorphose, they spend their final days visiting flowers looking for pollen and nectar. Here’s a haiku about a colorful insect that C.X. Turner found scurrying in the Midlands, England.

in the span
of what’s left...
flower-beetle

Kanematsu yearningly faced the Ukraine.

Sunset glow
in the distant west
warfare fires

After a lifetime of teaching, Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) may have faced the reality of death when he wrote this hokku: tooyama ga medama ni utsuru tombo kana

the distant mountains--
reflected in the eyes
of a dragonfly

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Learn to let go at http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network appears Aug. 18. Readers are invited to send haiku related to this hokku by Kobayashi Issa: the distant mountains--reflected in the eyes of a dragonfly, on a postcard to David McMurray at the International University of Kagoshima, Sakanoue 8-34-1, Kagoshima, 891-0197, Japan, or by e-mail to (mcmurray@fka.att.ne.jp).

* * *

David McMurray has been writing the Asahi Haikuist Network column since April 1995, first for the Asahi Evening News. He is on the editorial board of the Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku, columnist for the Haiku International Association, and is editor of Teaching Assistance, a column in The Language Teacher of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT).

McMurray is professor of intercultural studies at The International University of Kagoshima where he lectures on international haiku. At the Graduate School he supervises students who research haiku. He is a correspondent school teacher of Haiku in English for the Asahi Culture Center in Tokyo.

McMurray judges haiku contests organized by The International University of Kagoshima, Ito En Oi Ocha, Asahi Culture Center, Matsuyama City, Polish Haiku Association, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Seinan Jo Gakuin University, and Only One Tree.

McMurray’s award-winning books include: “Teaching and Learning Haiku in English” (2022); “Only One Tree Haiku, Music & Metaphor” (2015); “Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems” Vols. 1-8 (2013); and “Haiku in English as a Japanese Language” (2003).